


Dream A Little Dream

by Krasimer



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Collateral Damage, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family, Family Gatherings, Gathering together to feel better, Gen, Magnus has good dogs, Minor Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone), Nightmares, Stress Baking, Survival, Survivor Guilt, Taako has a good family, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 10:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13972698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: A year and four months after the day of Story and Song.Everyone is okay, but nightmares are still a thing - and this is how a family deals with it.





	Dream A Little Dream

He’s in Wonderland again.

Taako is suddenly less pretty and Merle is missing an eye – neither of them is doing good. His own body sort of melts away and suddenly, without any warning, Magnus feels himself unravel.

The room is coated in crystal and there are streams of black pouring in through the cracks and something is taking over his body. He can’t do anything to save his family, little as it is, and even the idea of seeing Julia again is not enough of a consolation prize for what he’ll lose if he gets pulled away from his family right now.

Angus is small and curled tightly in the corner, falling and crying out and then the time around him resets and it is happening again and again and again and Magnus tries to reach out for him.

Taako cries out and Magnus tries to reach for him, too.

Magnus whips around as Merle screams, his arm ripped off and his eye plucked out – so much more violent than Magnus remembers it actually being – and then he falls down and doesn’t move again.

Lucretia’s eyes stare up at him as the world around them bursts into flames.

He can hear Lup screaming for her brother in the distance – they had only had a few cycles where one twin had died and the other survived, but he remembers what it sounds like – and Barry is shouting for her and Magnus wants to cover his ears and block it all out but he doesn’t have his body anymore.

He sees the figure of Davenport trying to reach for Merle and then both the gnome and the dwarf are consumed by flames.

And then –

Magnus woke up.

He sat up in bed, breathing hard, and looked around. There were three dogs on the bed with him, Johann directly by his side. Johann sat up and made a confused noise, questioning why his person was awake when it was still dark-time.

He reached out and patted gently at Johann’s head, ruffling the fur there, then pressed his hands into his face, trying to breathe normally. When he had done that for a minute or two, Magnus reached to his bedside table and grabbed his stone of Farspeech.

He hesitated.

Merle was off on an adventure right now – Mookie and Mavis had been keeping in better contact with him than the dwarf had – and Davenport was off at sea again. Lup and Barry might be off on a job with Kravitz – maybe not? – but even if they weren’t, Lup was still getting used to being in a flesh body again. In the meantime, she was exhausted. In between jobs and the power she had used on the day of Story and Song, she was either dozing on a couch or in a sunspot or just passed out in their bed.

Taako?

Magnus pressed the button on his stone of Farspeech, turning it on. “Taako?” he asked quietly.

No response.

Feeling a little guilty, Magnus went to set the stone down, only to stop when he heard Taako’s slightly-out-of-breath voice on the line. “What’s up, my man?”

“N-Nothing much,” Magnus felt something in his chest relax, something he hadn’t even realized was tensed up. “Just…Rough night. Did I wake you up?”

“Nah,” he could practically see Taako’s handwave. “Cha’boy was awake and baking. Ango’s birthday is coming up, he needs the best fuckin’ cake he can get, even though he has _betrayed me_ by going to Lucas’s school.”

Magnus almost let that bit of information slide until he remembered – “Isn’t Angus’s birthday in, like…Three weeks?”

“Pfft, yeah,” Taako snorted. “Obviously I need time to prep for it. Get a sample case ready, get my boychik to okay flavors – lots of prep goes into birthday cakes, my man. Good ones, anyway – you can get those shitty ones at a store or something or you can have a goddamned Taako ™ original.” He paused, and when he spoke again Magnus could hear a bit of hesitance. Maybe even some worry. “When you said you were havin’ a rough night…” Magnus heard a small clatter. “Did you want to come over?”

“Uh, Taako,” Magnus laughed a little, petting soothingly at Johann when he startled. “Whether I want to or not, I’m in Ravensroost.”

“And?”

“You’re still in Faerun.”

“ _And?_ ”

“Taako?” Magnus laughed again. “I can’t teleport.”

“Yeah, well, I’m datin’ the fucking Grim Reaper and he can. Babe?” Taako’s voice went quieter for a second, then almost silent as he probably held the stone away from his face. When he came back on the line, it was with a bit of a happier note in his voice. “Okay, so get some fuckin’ pants on, Burnsides. I will kill you if my boyfriend is forced to see your junk or something.”

“Can I –”

“Yeah, bring your dogs, too. As long as they don’t chew on Kravitz, we’re good.”

 

~

 

Her first thought, when she sees the room lined with black curtains again, is that this is hell.

Lup turns and sees the curtains, sees nothing but the curtains, and the room is, at once, both bigger and smaller than it ever was before. She is trapped in a small space and she is unable to do anything about it and she is so alone. She is so alone that it makes her soul _burn_ – not in a good way, not in the way she has always associated with her evocations, but truly burn and feel like she will be rendered into nothing more than _ash._

And she is alone.

She knows that she went to bed next to Barry. Barry, her dorky-ass necromancer, the man it took her _decades_ to admit she loved, to actually realize she loved him. Barry is not here.

Lup is, for the first time since she was killed after trapping Cyrus, completely alone.

This time, there is not even a ghost of a sensation. There is no sound, there is no heat or cold besides a sickening feeling in her soul. Barry is gone, Taako is gone, all of her family is gone, and she is cold and empty and alone.

“—abe,” she felt something grab her shoulder, sensation returning to her in a flood.

When she opened her eyes, Lup spotted Barry. His glasses were sliding off his nose, like he hadn’t even put them on right before trying to wake her up. His eyes were wide behind them, something closer to fear than she’d like in them. His hands were hot, scorching against her skin, and she sat up slowly.

When she rubbed at her face, there were tears smeared across her hand.

Barry sat back on his heels, meeting her eyes. “Lup?” he asked quietly, cautious and careful. “You okay in there?”

“Fuck yeah,” she waved off his concern. “Just…”

“Yeah,” he nodded, then shoved his glasses back up his nose. “I think Taako’s awake, if that helps? I heard movement down in the kitchen, so he’s either awake or we’re being robbed.”

Lup burst into laughter, ugly and snorting, as she continued to wipe tears off her face. “No one would even fuckin’ touch our house, babe. Don’t worry about it.” She looked towards the door and bit her bottom lip. “Can…Would you mind if…”

“Here,” she watched as Barry slid off their bed and offered her a hand, then pulled her to her feet when she took it. “We’re going to go watch Taako cook or bake or whatever he’s doing right now. And,” he paused, waiting until their fingers were entangled before he started walking. “Did I ever tell you about the time I flirted with Taako?”

For a moment, Lup just stared at him.

When the words finally settled into her head, made a home for themselves, her eyebrows shot up and Lup stared at her lover with wide eyes. “ _What._ ” She managed to choke the word out.

“He was familiar and it was before my memories came back, back when Phandolin was still a place before Gundren went insane. Familiar but not quite right,” Barry grinned at her, sheepish and embarrassed, and she snorted out another laugh, pressing her free hand over her mouth.

“ _Babe,_ ” Lup looked at him, a delighted grin on her face. “You _flirted_ with my _twin brother._ ”

They had gotten to the bottom of the stairs and Taako looked up when she said that. “Oh, shit, right! Barold, have I given you shit about that yet?” he grinned, the same exact smile that was on his sister’s face, a mixing bowl in one arm and a spoon in the other.

Barry sighed and Lup leaned down to pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Don’t listen to him, babe,” she crooned the words out, pressing another kiss to the bright red spot growing underneath her lips. “He’s dating the _Grim Reaper.”_

 

~

 

Her nightmare, for that was what it must be, was filled with silence.

A world full of quiet – it should be a good thing, but there was a difference in types of silence and this was the kind that she had gotten too used to in a century of stolen lives and broken worlds. This was the silence that fell when her entire family had died and she alone had lived through the year. This was the silence that fell when she had seen Taako off to a new life without his memories, when she had given Merle a new god because Pan was too closely tied to their mission, for him.

The silence that had fallen when Lup and then Barry had gone missing.

The sort of static filled silence she had always heard when Davenport had looked at her, reduced to nothing other than his own name.

Lucretia looks around her and sees an ash-filled world, a world her and her family failed to save. She sees the broken buildings of the Legato Conservatory and she sees Tessarelia and she sees a hundred worlds around her, all at once. Their home flashes into being around her and she stifles a sob as she sees it.

Their world is far away.

It is back where it belongs now, most likely. The ones watching over them had seen to that, had started to put everything back where it belonged. Her home, the world on which she and the others had been born, was so far away but she sees it now.

And then the Hunger descends.

She is not, in fact, on the Starblaster as it escapes. Not this time. She is left behind to watch in horror as the world is devoured. Consumed, broken, taken into the black, she is the only one left.

And she is alone.

She is the villain, Lucretia thinks as she falls to her knees. She had gotten so wrapped up in her own plan, in the only way she could think of to see things through, that she had forgotten to look for other paths. She had warped her family, twisted their minds and set about splitting them apart.

Magnus had taken well to Ravensroost – she had checked on him every few months until one month she had checked and the entire city was _gone._

Taako had belonged to everyone, she’d thought at the time. A world full of loving fans and people who adored him as much as she had, that was what he’d deserved. She’d thought she had given it to him. Sazed had proven her wrong with a proverbial knife to her brother’s back.

Merle had been dropped headfirst into an unhappy marriage, despite her trying to ensure that he ended up in a good place. She’d put him on a beach, near the ocean – he had always loved the beach, the ocean, the way the waves hit the sand.

Davenport remained with her, practically chained to her side with how much of his mind she had single-handedly torn apart.

Lucretia watches as the world splinters apart around her and she thinks, brokenly and quietly, ‘ _I deserve this’._

“ _LUCRETIA!”_

She bolted upright, her eyes wide and her heart hammering in her chest. On her bedside table, her stone of Farspeech was flashing wildly, Taako’s voice coming out of it in worried warbles, desperate and scared.

Even though he hadn’t forgiven her yet?

Shaking, she extended a hand and picked up the stone, feeling the shape and heft of it. “Taako?” Lucretia glanced at a clock, swallowing some of the panic that welled up inside of her. “It is two in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Taako’s voice sounded firmer, now. “I _may_ have cast clairvoyance on you and your room, to see if you were awake. You were thrashing around, ‘Creesh. Thought you were gonna break somethin’, decided to shout into my stone until you woke up. Looked like a fuckin’ nightmare.”

“…Why are you awake?”

“Couldn’t rest,” he sounded as tired as she felt. “Why don’t you come on down? Shoot yourself from a canon, ‘Creesh, come join us down at Casa de Lup and Taako. I’m making pastries of a lot of different types.”

“Okay,” Lucretia laughed, just a little, then laughed some more. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

“You know I need some fuckin’ help with eating all of this, don’t make me do this alone.”

“I said I’m coming!” she laughed again, already moving around the room and pulling on something more substantial than her pajamas.

The tight guilt in her chest eased, just a fraction.

 

~

 

There were bodies everywhere.

Some of them were still faintly moving, hands at their throats as they choked on their own spit and bile. Poison had already killed many of them, hands clawed into the ground, eyes bulging out of their heads.

Taako looks down at his hands and sees blood on them, coating them so thickly that he can’t even see his own skin anymore.

Beneath his feet is a circle of black glass.

He is surrounded by bodies of those who died while he watched – Phandolin, Glamour Springs, every world he ever had to watch be consumed by the angry vore cloud, Hungry John. His own home flashes by him for a moment and he remembers his aunt’s face, the only kindness he and Lup had gotten after their parents had died.

Taako looks at the death and destruction around him and he almost expects Kravitz to show up.

But then he looks up.

The Sea of Souls is above him, churning and wild, and he can just barely pick out his boyfriend’s hands and head as they sink beneath the waves. When Taako stumbles, he hears a clattering noise and looks back down – a Soulwood arm and Railsplitter are on the ground in front of him. Further away is a pair of red robes and beyond that is a staff, and the ruins of the Starblaster.

He runs.

For a moment, he wheels wildly as he trips over something and that something is the absolute last thing he wants to see in a nightmare world like this one.

A small figure, eyes wide and an arm outstretched.

Angus stares up at him, dead and cold, and Taako shakes.

When he woke up, there was barely any difference at first. The image of Angus, dead and cold and so small, is burned into his eyelids. His family, torn apart again, ripped away from him. Everyone he loves, as stretched and tested as that love may be.

“Dove?” came a soft voice from beside him. Kravitz’s voice was sleep-rough and Taako wanted to bury his face in the Reaper’s chest.

He also wanted to be several hundred miles from that exact spot.

Taako rolled over, sitting up slowly and curling his knees to his chest as he leaned out over the edge of the bed. He felt sick, like something needed to come out of his stomach. He needed to eat, needed to starve, needed to—

Kravitz’s hand was chilled and on his shoulder, warming up the longer he was awake. “Taako, what’s happening?”

Turning on his hip, Taako shoved his face into his boyfriend’s chest, clinging to him so tightly that his knuckles went a bloodless white. “I need,” he choked the words out. His fingers tangled in the fabric of Kravitz’s sleep shirt. “Please, I need…”

“Tell me,” Kravitz said simply, like it wasn’t the most difficult thing in the world.

Taako rearranged himself until he was sitting in Kravitz’s lap, chest-to-chest with him. “Just…” he dropped his head, hiding his face in the cascade of hair and the curve of his boyfriend’s neck. “Kitchen.”

Kravitz took a deep breath. “Kitchen?”

“Baking. Cooking. Something. Anything.” Taako gripped him impossibly tighter, feeling Kravitz’s hands on his back. “Need to create something. Instead. Too much destruction.”

“Ah,” Kravitz stood up slowly, balancing Taako as he started to walk.

He paused for a moment to grab his robe, then continued on. “What are you going to make, dove?”

“Food.”

“Alright,” Kravitz chuckled, an oddly warm noise for someone usually so cold to the touch. “What kind of food?” he turned to lights in the kitchen on, then set Taako into one of the stool-chairs at the breakfast bar.

“…Pastries,” Taako muttered after a minute. “Cookies. Macarons. Cake. Pastries. Definitely a mixture of all of the above.” He shivered, then shook his head. “Just…Give me a second.”

Kravitz nodded.

Taako cast Clairvoyance five times, then hesitated on the sixth before deciding not to, just yet. “Merle is alright. The trip is at sleeping time. Davenport is alright – restocking the ship, in town. Magnus is asleep but he looks like he’s having a rough night. Barry and Lup are upstairs and Lup is doing the nightmare twitch. Angus is sleeping in his dormitory, like a good boychik.” He turned to look as Kravitz rustled around in a cabinet. “What’cha doin’, bone daddy?”

“Ingredients,” Kravitz smiled at him, setting them out on the counter. He returned to the cabinet and the ice box a few more times, until the entire counter in front of Taako was covered in different kinds of flour, flavorings, fruits, and candies. “And also,” he kneeled down and pulled Taako’s mixing bowls out of another cabinet. “Things to mix in,” he returned to that cabinet again. “Things to bake in.”

“…I fucking love you,” Taako said quietly, awed by his boyfriend. “…I have one more spell to cast.”

“I had wondered.”

Lucretia was having a bad time of things. And then he had invited her to their house. When Lup and Barry came downstairs, Taako felt something inside of him relax.

“Babe,” Taako interrupted himself from a call with Magnus. “Would you mind getting Mango from Ravensroost and getting him here?”

Kravitz kissed his cheek and nodded, already summoning his scythe to open the necessary portals.

Within minutes, the fighter was in their kitchen, his three dogs following along. Johann stayed near Magnus but the other two wandered over to Lup and Barry for petting.

When Lucretia arrived, she and Taako eyed each other. Her eyes were still filled with her nightmares.

Taako merely tossed an apron to her and quirked an eyebrow. “Doesn’t matter if you’re cooking or not,” he told her, waving to the rest of the gathered. Even Barry was decked out in one. “Everyone in the kitchen wears a goddamned apron.”

Lucretia smiled and Taako counted it as a victory, watching her slide it on over her head and the cardigan she wore.

 

~

 

His dreams are static.

Everything is falling apart, and his dreams are static and the world around him is filled with bits and pieces of a life he wants to remember.

Davenport sits in the static for what seems like an eternity, until he doesn’t anymore.

The dream was over before he even realized it.

When he sat up in bed, Davenport reached for his stone of Farspeech. His hands were shaking as he turned it on but he managed to get it to call. “M-Merle?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Merle’s voice was rough, groggy, and Davenport felt guilty for waking him up. “What’s up?”

Static filling up the world, pouring down his throat, filling him and rending him apart until that was all that was left. Static destroying everything and everyone he had ever loved, leaving him a living shell of a gnome.

“Nothing m-much.”

He stuttered all the time, now. His hands sometimes shook and he stuttered and he was still partially broken from their daughter trying to fix the world on her own. Gods, he loved his adopted daughter but she had clearly inherited her stubbornness from one of them – he could not tell which one.

“Alright,” he could _hear_ Merle trying to puzzle out what was wrong, just with that one word. “Mavis and Mookie said to say hi, by the way. Mavis wants to talk to you about illusory magic, when you get back. Mookie wants to know if you can bring him something neat from the sea.”

“D-do my bes-best,” Davenport said quietly. “Did he sa-say what kind of thing?”

“Something with tentacles, I think? Not sure.”

Davenport laughed. “I’m in Faerun,” he managed to say it without stuttering, proud of himself for it. “Think I sho-should check on the other ki-kids?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Merle chuckled. “Lup likes fire and Taako is both a flip wizard and a transmutation specialist. If their house isn’t burned down or twisted into weird shapes, I will be _very_ surprised. Maybe even Magnus, with them. I know that there are at least four of our kids there – Kravitz is dating Taako, I think he gets to count – so it’s definitely a good time to go check on them.”

Before Davenport could answer, the taste of a familiar sort of magic was in the air.

It was the sort of thing only someone who’d been around the caster for over a century could detect. Anyone else who tried would find it an impossible task. Taako was, it appeared, checking on him. “Thi-think they know I’m here,” Davenport told Merle. “Going to go se-see them.”

“Alright,” Merle said again. “Go keep our kids alive. Tell them I said hi.”

“I will,” Davenport smiled as he slipped his stone of Farspeech back into his pocket.

 

~

 

His dreams are filled with something close to happiness, these days.

Merle hopes he can teach his family – extended and all – the sort of peace he has claimed for himself. There are no more nightmares of pain and terror, for him. The final moments he had with John seemed to have wiped it all away.

When he dreams, he is with his family. Aboard the Starblaster, celebrating a victory no matter what decade it is or what they look like. With Mookie and Mavis and a small crew of teenage will-be-adventurers. With Taako and Magnus, laughing at some stupid joke one of his kids said to him. Sometimes he dreams of being with Davenport, though that has gotten to be less common after the gnome and him had gotten their reunion.

He is, after all, a beach dwarf. His husband is out at sea. There is a meeting of worlds and when it does happen to get to be a bit much, he can call Davenport on his stone and talk to him.

Taako could benefit, especially. Lup definitely could. The twins carried nightmares like glass carried fingerprints.

Lucretia he might have to argue with, but she one-hundred-percent needed the sort of peace and happiness he’d found. Madame Director and in charge of so much and aware of so many deaths, she was stressed out and panicked about everything, once he got past the surface of things. In so many ways, she was still the young scribe they’d hired on to their mission. By how many years she’d been alive, she was over a century old – older still, if he counted the years she’d gained in Wonderland. She was only supposed to be about the same age as Magnus.

Merle sighed and set down his stone of Farspeech, giving it a sort of gentle pat as he ended the call with Davenport.

His husband was easy to read, even over a call.

He’d likely woken up with a nightmare and had called Merle to hear something other than what was in his head.

He would have to teach him, too.

With that, Merle leaned back on his bedroll and curled his flesh arm behind his head, his Soulwood arm resting on his stomach.

His family would hold itself together.

He closed his eyes and sent a thankful prayer to Pan, falling back into his dreams quickly.

**Author's Note:**

> Are you guys getting tired of me yet?


End file.
